Throughout the city children have been put to work as beggars. More often than not they reside in cars and vans with their families. They sit in the vehicles waiting for passersby and those that are obviously tourists. When they are approached, one child will hop out and go running down the road. As pictured below, if one child is given money, the parents send out another. The goal is to make as much off each visitor as possible, and these children have it down to a science. The kids know that whatever they make is what they eat, and as a result, they have become one of the most persistent work forces in Sarajevo. The people of Sarajevo do not protest. The city is reconstructing not only its buildings and infrastructure, but the essence of the city itself. The handouts to the children bring back the memories of neighbors who would do anything for each other; the unique lifestyle of a Bosnian, not a Serb, Croat, or Bosniak, but something more. As written by Miljenko Jergović, in Sarajevo Marlboro, people “spend money more freely than ever, because [they] don’t have enough of a stake in this new city to buy anything of value.”
Children
